When it comes to the iPhone, I’m an idiot, I’ve always been an idiot, and I’ll always be an idiot, and I don’t care.

I’ve finally switched full time to an Apple
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iPhone after holding out for 10 years, and you know what? Those things are so overrated. I have no idea what all the fuss is about.

This isn’t even the third-best smartphone I’ve ever owned, even though it costs more than any of them. It’s not as good as my $180 BlackBerry
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Passport, with its matchless keyboard. It’s not as good as the $120 Blu Life One XL I got last year.

In a rational market, Apple would have had to slash its prices to compete with Android phones.

It’s not that the iPhone is bad. It’s fine. It’s just that it’s not noticeably better than phones that cost a fraction of the price. When I fired Google
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last month and decided I had to no choice but to embrace Apple full time, I walked into the Apple store by Tiffany’s in New York.

And gawped at the prices.

Seriously, $350 for an unlocked SE? And $700 for an iPhone 7? Are you out of your mind?

Eventually, elsewhere I managed to find an SE for $150 with AT&T
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pay-as-you-go. But it’s still locked, so as I’m in London right now, and I have to use my BlackBerry. Bah.

I see young people walking around using iPhones with smashed screens because their phones are so expensive, they can’t afford to replace them. What is wrong with these people?

Did I mention I got a terrific phone two years ago for $70 — without a contract?

I actually bought the Nokia after my first unsatisfactory experience using Apple. But that was only brief. Now that there are basically only two operating systems still available, and as I have fired Google, I’m now stuck with it for good.

‘Not the future’

It’s just over 10 years since the first iPhone was launched. Back then I wrote that it was “not the future.” Sometimes trolls like to throw that back at me, generally — actually, invariably — without reading the article.

But you know what? I was right. The iPhone, as unveiled by Steve Jobs in 2007, sucked. It lacked 3G, for heaven’s sake. It was locked to a single network and an expensive two-year contract. It had no third-party apps. I repeat: It had no apps. You couldn’t download media over the air. Seriously, to listen to music on your iPhone, you had to first plug it into your laptop and then sideload the stuff. It was limited to 16 gigabytes of memory. It wouldn’t allow free Wi-Fi calling.

All of those features were already standard on many other smartphones that cost a fraction of the price.

Oh, yeah — and the iPhone cost $600.

Are you kidding me?

Yet people lined up around the block to buy it.

Since then, of course, Apple has changed almost everything. Yes, “the future” meant an unlocked phone with lots of third-party apps, high speed data, Wi-Fi calling and over-the-air media downloads. You couldn’t give away a product without it.

One differentiating feature

Back then, the iPhone had one genuine feature that was ahead of its time: the amazing user interface. It was a terrific innovation. The capacitive touchscreen had only recently been invented, and Apple was the first out of the block to take advantage.

Today, every smartphone has it.

Yet for all that, something amazing has happened. Something I did not expect and still find extraordinary.

Even though Apple has charged, and continues to charge, vastly more than its competitors for a comparable product, millions of people still line up around the block to buy it. There is no real reason why people should pay hundreds of dollars more for the iPhone. Yet they do.

People who are rightly worried about money — student loans, health-care costs, apartment rentals — still stand in line to buy a new $700 phone while chatting online to their friends on the perfectly good $700 iPhone they bought last year.

Will many of them buy the $999 X model? Why not? It’s no more ridiculous a deal than any of the others.

Rational market theory

In a rational market, Apple would have had to slash its prices to compete with Android phones. (Yes, I slightly prefer the iOS operating system. And, yes, Apple could rationally charge a bit more because of it. But nothing like what it does.)

And so its operating margins, currently 39% gross and 26% net of central costs, would have collapsed.

And that is what I got wrong. The “future” in 2007 lay with the Apple brand. This is a luxury-goods company, like Gucci or Cartier or Hermès. Apple users get to look down their noses at those who use cheapo Android phones.

And that’s how investors should probably view it. Interestingly enough, for the past few years Apple stock has actually performed like a luxury-goods stock. It’s looked a lot like Christian Dior or Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy.

Will people continue to pay extra for Apple-branded phones? I have no idea. Consumer brands are incredibly powerful, and Apple’s may be the strongest in the world. On the other hand, luxury goods are irrational and consumers are fickle.

When it comes to people paying three times as much for something just because of the name, I am, I admit, an idiot.

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